Can we, the people of Asia
and Africa, learn from Mandela’s legacy and turn the conflicting shatter zones
of Middle East, North and central Africa into abodes of peace?
One wonders how
Nelson Mandela would be celebrated on his birthday today July 18th 2016 this year if he was alive.
Madiba (as he was called by
the proud South Africans) held his ‘Long walk to Freedom’ covering six decades
of struggle to rid the Black Africans of the ruthless Apartheid rule and give
them a sense of dignity. The tall Xhosa and his simple soul were too strong for
the white apartheid regimes of Southern Africa. His strong resolve to fight for
self-determination and empowerment of the indigenous Africans won him many
laurels in the international community.
Mandela’s life has been
recorded in detail, from his birth in the Thembu royal house of Xhosa tribe to
his death in December 2013 in Johannesburg. While it may be appropriate to
review his complete life on the auspicious occasion of his birthday, I feel it
more appropriate to highlight his contribution towards international peace and
his ability to build South Africa as a Rainbow Nation, where all communities
could live in harmony for collective good of the people.
Mandela and his close
associates had suffered enormously at the hands of White Apartheid regimes from
Francois Malan in 1948 to FW de Klerk in 1988. He was chased, prosecuted for
his liberal ideas, imprisoned at Robben Island and then transferred to
Pollsmoor Prison, Cape Town with the total period of imprisonment spanning
almost three decades.
Mandela was maltreated and
kept in the squalid condition of a damped concrete cell measuring eight feet by
seven feet and even poisoned (which later on developed into tuberculosis) but
his will and resolve remained unshakable.
His high point of
statesmanship was May 10th 1994, when he was sworn in as the first Black
president of a South African nation as almost a billion viewers worldwide
watched. Mandela’s ability to build South Africa as a Rainbow Nation of
different communities and his reconciliation with his former tormentors (white
leaders and the community) was highly appreciated by the international
community. His policy of reconciliation laid the foundation of a modern South
Africa, as he once remarked.
Mandela’s legacy and spirit
of reconciliation and peace can lead the world today through the bad patch of
conflict and turmoil it’s going through, towards an era of lasting peace. I
fail to understand why we, the people of Middle East, West Asia, and North
Africa torn by petty conflicts and divisions, cannot coexist in the 21st
century as normal and cordial humans.
Madiba rest on
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